CHAPTER 5
I knocked on the door.
"Come on in, the door is open!" I twisted the doorknob, an act in which I would have been defeated by if I had been a hawk. We piled in.
Ax sniffed the air. He was in human morph in all its bizarreness. "Smells like bunzzz, buh ha nezzzz."
"Ax, er… Max, yes it does smell like cinnamon buns. Now let's sit down." We sat at the table, and Tabitha came out with a plate full of cinnamon buns.
"Here you go, oh my, I don't know your name," she said.
"Max, my name is Max," but he had already started with the cinnamon buns so it came out like "Muff, mi mame ef muff."
"His name is Max." I answered for him.
"And you," pointing to Rachel, "I figured at first you were just a dumb blond, but that look you gave me, wow, so I made you a cheese burger with fries, and a chef salad."
"Wow, you're good," Rachel answered impressed.
She brought out the burger and Ax eyed it. Before it could develop into a really bizarre situation, Tabitha bought out another burger," I know foreign kids want to try everything, so I made him a little bit of everything."
"Good idea," I commented.
"So, uh, where are your parents? And why do you cook?" Rachel asked.
From the kitchen she answered, "My dad died and my mom is working. She works a lot and so I learned to cook. I really got tired of TV dinners."
She came out with another plate. Even with my weak human sense of smell I could recognize the blood.
"And for you, you were hard, but a deer stake, rare. If I had rabbit... I think I would have gone for that, but deer is as close as I could get." Tabitha presented hesitantly. "If it is too rare I can cook it some more."
"No, no it's fine," I said awestruck. How did she know? Was it just a lucky guess?
I had to ask, "How did you know?"
"Well, your eyes, they seemed, well hard," described our host who looked momentarily thoughtful and unsure of her own answer. "Gosh, I don't know. I just guessed."
"And what are you having?" Rachel asked in curiosity.
Tabitha blushed, "Well, see that is the strange part." She brought out a plate that was identical to mine. "It's the same as Tobias'."
We looked at each other hard for a few seconds. Even Ax had stopped eating. Then there was a sound of a key in a lock. We all jumped.
"Oh, don't worry it's just my-." She stopped mid-sentence as the door opened. Then things got really weird.